Some more information. My guild and I just cleared out the encounter on 10 man.

We brought a standard loadout:

2 tanks

3 healers

5 DPS

Hereâ€™s a few extra notes.

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler

Looks like the Snobolds are the ones dropping fires. The person attacked by the Snobold cannot attack the Snobold himself. That person has to stay on the boss as thereâ€™s nothing else they can do. The rest of the raid has to clear out the Snobolds as fast as possible. Looks like theyâ€™re the ones that drop fires on the ground.

Our tanks switched between 3-4 Impale debuffs.

Phase 2: Acidmaw and Dreadscale

When you kill one snake, the other will enrage.

Phase 3: Icehowl

When he does his leap knocking players to the wall, everyone will be stunned for a few seconds. Heâ€™ll focus a player, and then run towards him. At this time, all players gain some sort of a speed increase to help them get clear.

If he manages to hit a player, he will enrage. But itâ€™s temporary. Looks like it lasts for around 10 or so seconds before it wears off.

The Beasts encounter consists of three separate fights within 1 encounter. Consider the strategies here in beta. The information is pulled from watching various videos and reading further into datamined abilities. Feel free to make any adjustments or corrections in the comments below. Once I knock out the fight myself, Iâ€™ll update this with further information.

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler

Inflicts 150% of weapon damage to an enemy and causes it to bleed for 3500 to 4500 damage per application every 2 sec. for 30 sec. (10 second cooldown)

Your tank is going to position Gormok in the middle of the room.

The raid is going to be assaulted by Snobold Vassal. They come from the boss. Various raid members are going to be attacked by them. Seems like they jump onto players individually and prevent them from using abilities or spells. The only way for them to be removed is for your raid members to target them and kill them.

/target Snobold Vassal

Iâ€™d suggest adding that to your macro list and having it bound.

Watch out for patches of fire on the ground. Just stay out of them. No idea how much damage players take. No reason to stand in them.

You will need two tanks to handle this. The cooldown on impale is every 10 seconds. Your tanks have to switch and taunt every 30 seconds before the stacking debuff overwhelms them.

Healing Gormok

Start off with 6 healers.

Assign 2 to the tanks who are switching back and forth.

You may need 1-2 healers on the melee as they will be affected by the Staggering Stomp.

Put the last healers on raid to take care of any Vassal or fire damage. They should also help support the tanks if theyâ€™re idle.

Once he dies, you have about 15-20 seconds before the twin worms appear.

Deals 3700 to 4300 Fire damage per 0.25 sec. to enemies in front of the caster.

100 yd range, Instant

You can see the similarities between the 2 snakes. One snake will be grounded at a time while the other will be above ground. They alternative every so often.

First thing youâ€™ll notice is that the tanks immediately face them away from the group. This helps offset Molten Spew and Acidic Spew. Make sure the tanks arenâ€™t near each other either. You want to avoid overlapping spews.

Take note that all DPS is focused on the snake currently above ground. The snake thatâ€™s grounded probably has some sort of damage reduction modifier.

Snake above ground

Kite him in a clockwise fashion. He has to be kept moving. Around the 3:25 mark, you can see poison clouds being left. Think of Grobbulus. Have a traditional tank kite whichever snake is up. What weâ€™re seeing is a caster tank (presumable a Warlock) on Acidmaw and holding aggro (or whoever snake is grounded). You can probably keep one healer on it.

When the snakes switch, keep an eye on the ground. Look for dust particles. Get clear of them as thatâ€™s your cue as to the snake positions.

IMPORTANT!

When Acidmaw is grounded, heâ€™s going to be able to hit any player with Paralytic Spray. Targets nearby will be hit with that as well.

Applies a paralytic toxin that inflicts increasing Nature damage every 1 sec. and reduces movement speed over time until the victim is entirely paralyzed.

This is what Burning Bile does:

Coats enemies with burning bile, inflicting periodic Fire damage to them and their nearby allies. The burning bile of a jormungar is known to neutralize paralytic toxins.

So one of these toxins is going to cause your raiders to slowly become paralyzed and take increasing nature damage. The burning bile can clean that crap off. The raiders affected by burning bile have to run towards the toxin affected players. Make it easy and have both players run towards each other to speed it up even more.

If you wish to make it even easier for yourself, just have affected raid members run towards the main tank. It wonâ€™t matter who has what buffs as theyâ€™ll be able to cancel each other out.

Be sure that you kill Acidmaw first. If you kill Dreadscale first, you wonâ€™t have a way of removing the Paralysis.

Acidmaw above ground

The situation is going to be reversed. The main tank is going to be hit with the paralytic poison. Designate a player to run in periodically and stand near the tank to wipe off the poison.

Healing Acidmaw and Dreadscale

2 healers on the main tanks, 1 on the caster tank, and 3 on the rest of the raid. Remember that raiders will take damage from Burning Bile so they have to take care where they stand.

Iâ€™m not quite sure when they switch. I donâ€™t know if its time based or percentage based.

No downtime between snakes and Icemaw. Heâ€™s tanked near the middle of the room.

Artic Breath doesnâ€™t seem to be controllable. Heâ€™ll just turn and spray. Think to those big Sons of Hodir trash mobs in front of Hodir. Have an off tank ready to pick him up just in case. The Breath is a channelled. As long as hes channeling the spell, players caught in the breath canâ€™t do anything.

Dealing with Ferocious Butt

Okay, fast forward to 7:36. Icehowl leaps in the air and knocks everyone towards the wall (Massive Crash). The boss mod will announce that Icehowl is glaring at a player and lets out a bellowing roar. A quicker way is to see if the boss is facing your direction. If he is, RUN TO THE SIDE AND GET OUT OF THE DAMN WAY. At this point, Icehowl gets stunned for several seconds allowing the raid to get back into position. It seems like he takes extra damage during this stage. Looks like the stun lasts 15 seconds.

After his stun wears off, his Whirl kicks in (spins around and knocks back everyone). Your tank needs to haul ass back in range fast.

Icehowl gains an enrage and it must be dispelled. Itâ€™s called Frothing Rage. A Hunterâ€™s Tranquilizing Shot should negate that quite nicely. Look at 8:29 for a better idea. I think this happens if Icehowl manages to connect on a player with Ferocious Butt and kills a guy or manages to hit someone. Note that the Enrage appears to wear off after 10 â€“ 15 seconds if youâ€™re not able to Tranq Shot it.

Healing Icehowl

Same thing as before. 2-3 healers on the main tank (I recommend a Disc Priest). Everyone else is on raid healing.

Keep tanking him centralized. When he nukes the ground, get the heck out of the way. Resume DPS. Rinse, repeat, link loot.

I hope this helps you guys out! Again, any other observations or corrections, please post in the comments. Strategies here were pulled from watching the video and from reading the datamined stuff. Iâ€™ll probably end up modifying this later depending on how off I am or if thereâ€™s a better idea.

European players get a treat as they got to check out an encounter on the EU PTR (unannounced I might add).

This appears to be one of the first encounters youâ€™ll find entering raid aspect of the coliseum. The sequence here is that it’s 3 sets of mobs that come in one after the other. A Hunter provides the video perspective here (and wow, I’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before but then again, Iâ€™ve never played a Hunter). It looks to be an encounter that’ll take a little under 9 minutes or so give or take.

Gormok

Seems like a straightforward tank and spank. I noticed the Hunter had to switch fire periodically. Looked like he was targeting members of the raid and trying to shoot something off. That’s some serious precision right there.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale

These damned Storm Peaks snakes again. I thought I had seen the last of them in the cavern when I was getting all the Oil and stuff out of there. Figures they’d be back again.

Icehowl

The first thing I noticed about his abilities is that he does a ~70000 damage headbutt followed by a stun. Oi vey.

Looks like you’ll be engaging all of these bosses one after the other with little to no reprieve. I can’t wait!

Epic

About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on WoW Insider. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. Or if you're looking to join a guild, check out my guild Conquest.